“RAPE” IS NOT DEATH OF A WOMAN, THATS WHAT ALL OF YOU W ANT IT TO BE ?

ITS THE SOCIETY WHICH HAS ATTACHED THE SOCIAL STIGMA AND YOU ARE PERPETUATING IT PATHETIC !

Parliamentarians should shout for JUSTICE and Convictions , instead of saying things like ‘zinda lash’ (living corpse) and asking for death penalty.

Chemical castration breaches the physical intrinsity of the human body. As we have abolished physical penalties (chopping off hands, beatings etc), why would we re-introduce . Since castration is irreversible, should this penalty be allowed, especially as our judicial system has been proven to be wrong every now and then. And tell me how will it work ? you will have to give injections fo depo vera— every time a rape is committed, there will someone running behind the rapist on road to inject him ???

WITH THIS WHOLE CLAMOUR OF DEATH PENALTY, All the Politician sitting in our parliament are superficial people , the media wants more eyeballs and suddenly we have this knee jerk reaction to gang rape coming out in form of REVENGE and not JUSTICE. What a twisted logic is that capital punishment will be an effective deterrent to potential rapists. The quantum of punishment does not deter crime. In fact, the higher the punishment, the lower the conviction rate.is required is speedy trial. Ensure speedy trials. That would deter would-be rapists.

If rape and violence against women are not rare but occur within every class, and at a variety of junctures, making the offense itself almost ordinary by nature of its frequency of occurrences, then to accord the death penalty for such cases would simply reduce convictions .Before the death penalty get the convictions right.

The convictions against cases of violence against women, especially rape cases are themselves extremely complex and pivot around the nuanced issues of consent/force. It is never a simple and straightforward matter to determine whether the woman had consented. From the beginning? At what point otherwise? To what extent was she willing to have physical relations with a man? But at which point did it become force or coercion? The entire issue of violence against women is not easily amenable to legalistic jargon that makes claims to truth “based on a binary logic which sets up oppositions like truth/untruth, guilt/innocence, consent/non-consent. This binary logic is completely inappropriate to… the ambiguity of rape.

Women’s bodies as the new reason to kill ?

The point is “Death Penalty” to rapists is a reinforcement of the same “honour-shame” syndrome. Moreover why will the rapist not get rid of all possible evidence, which might take him towards death penalty? Yes, I mean why will he not kill the rape survivor in the end of the day? Moreover why should we go by the Sexual Hierarchy set by our patriarchal society? A sexual assault is a sexual assault and can’t be judged by the parameters of “penetration” alone. A Trauma is a trauma and can’t be judged by the parameters of “Honour” and “Shame”. In the end no woman loses her “honour” when she is raped. She loses it when she allows her mind to believe it.

The ideological underpinnings of the demand for the death penalty for rape reflect the traditional patriarchal and reactionary view of women as property. Rape is seen not as an assault on the integrity of the women as assaulted, but far more as an assault of the community, of society, of the nation.The demand for death penalty hides certain power relations and assumptions made by those advocating the death penalty. Furthermore, they point to the fact that bringing in the death penalty for rape will not in anyway increase convictions, but may lower the already very low-levels of convictions because of fear to convict any rapist incase of error.

The death penalty weighs the scales of justice heavily in favour of the state by giving the state legally sanctioned power over the life and death of its citizens. Such power all too often is used arbitrarily; it is applied neither uniformly nor fairly, even in cases of the same nature and severity. In many cases, the decision to apply the death sentence is driven by issues other than the crime itself.

By playing to the desire for revenge in individual cases, states in which the death penalty is used ignore difficult questions about the relationship between crime, the criminal and the state. A fake sense of moral superiority is thus sustained as culpability is shifted from formal and informal social, political and economic structures of domination and oppression, solely to the accused.

Hence for me , a FEMINIST , these promises of security, better safety and liberty have been questionable and problematic. It hides the strong link between justice and the state and how justice may operate to benefit certain parties only. The use of women’s bodies and the category of violence against women to insist on the death penalty is a manipulation of the feminist agenda and its concern for women into a tool by others (including but not exclusively the state) to control and discipline its citizens further.

As suggested by Foucault, the prison itself maybe a new way of ordering society, of disciplining it and creating new forms of docile bodies constituted in such a way as to make the power of the state and certain groups more effective. It is important then to rethink forms of correction and punishment to ensure that those convicted of crimes are not merely placed in another institution in which power is even more insidious than even the death penalty or public executions.

Richard Sollom, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights said: “We are disappointed, though not surprised, that the Bahraini regime once again has decided to punish health professionals merely for expressing their right to peaceful assembly. Instead of punishing these dedicated professionals, the Government of Bahrain should focus on prosecuting the people responsible for torturing many of those who were arrested and detained.”

The 23 people convicted today include 12 physicians, as well as nurses and other health professionals. All are expected to appeal their convictions. Four other health professionals whose appeals were denied in October are already serving sentences ranging from one to five years.

Last year, a Commission of Inquiry established by the King of Bahrain to investigate charges of human rights abuses, recommended that the government review and commute the sentences of all persons charged with offenses involving peaceful political expression and to drop any outstanding charges against them. However, the court did not follow this advice.

“None of these health professionals belongs in prison,” said Sollom. “Once again, we call on the regime to reverse the convictions of all health professionals, to expunge those convictions from their records, to restore them to their jobs, and to compensate them for the time they lost in having to challenge these spurious charges.”

: Odisha, Sambalpur, , Convict, 7-year-old girl, driver, rape
Sambalpur: A court in Odisha has convicted a driver for rape and murder of a seven-year-old daughter of a wage-earner, within 29 days of occurrence of the crime.

District and Sessions Judge, Sambalpur, Bibhu Prasad Routray yesterday convicted Pradip Dalai of Balibhanga area under town police limits here for committing the crime on September 2.

The court reserved till tomorrow the order for pronouncing the quantum of punishment.

The prosecution said, the girl, a class II student of an upper primary school in Jhaduapura, was playing with her friends on the day when she was lured away by the man, who was known to her, on the promise of chowmein treat.

When the girl did not return home at night, her body was found after a search by her parents and relatives from a bush near Ring Road.

The girl, daughter of daily wage earner, was found to have been raped and strangulated.

Pradip was arrested and chargesheeted within seven days.

Altogether 12 persons including her mother, medical officer of VSS Medical College Hospital who had conducted the post-mortem, an officer of Town police station and a woman sub- inspector had deposed in the course of the trial.

Pradip was convicted under different sections of IPC for kidnapping, rape, murder and tampering with the evidences based on the circumstantial evidence, seizures and deposition by witnesses, Public Prosecutor (PP) Artatrana Mishra said.

Claiming that the court order had set a record of sorts in the Odisha judiciary, Mishra said, “It’s for the first time in the history of state’s judiciary that a judgement was delivered within only 29 days of the occurrence of a crime.”